Software:Undead Knights

Undead Knights
American box art
Developer(s)	Team Tachyon Now Production
Publisher(s)	Tecmo
Platform(s)	PlayStation Portable
Release	NA: September 29, 2009 JP: October 15, 2009 EU: February 26, 2010 AU: March 4, 2010
Genre(s)	Action-adventure, hack & slash
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Undead Knights (アンデッドナイツ) is an action-adventure video game developed by Team Tachyon and Now Production and published by Tecmo for the PlayStation Portable. It was released in North America and Japan in 2009 and in the PAL region in 2010.

Gameplay

Undead Knights is an action-adventure game in the style of God of War. The player character’s goal is to kill all the enemies and bosses on different levels. The player character can perform melee attacks and chain multiple attacks to make "combos," as well as grabbing and killing enemies in quick-time events.

Plot

The story follows a trio of knights: Romulus Blood (Keith Ferguson) is a human knight and former head of the House of Blood who made a Faustian bargain with an unseen demon known as The Beast (Steve Blum), together with his younger brother Remus (Andrew Kashino) and Sylvia Gradis, Remus' wife and princess of Cavalier (Megan Hollingshead), after the slaughter of the House of Blood under the orders of King Kirk Gladys (voiced by Steve Blum) and his charismatic, tyrannical wife named Fatima (Wendy Braun). Throughout the game, The Beast grants each of the three characters a second chance at life as necromancers who can turn their still-living enemies into undead soldiers.

The trio first goes after Duke Gloucester, a former war hero who became a corrupt glutton and fights against him. He desperately attempts to kill them with a demon, but the knights kill him. The trio soon discovers that they have become more demonic as they go on their path of revenge due to bargaining with the Beast.

As the story progresses, each one of the three knights goes after several individuals responsible for taking part in their deaths. Soon, they discover the Fruit of the Holy Tree, a demonic fruit that turns its user into a demon. Captain Gerrard, a leader of a trio of knights who consider Fatima a saint, uses the Fruit after discovering his daughter was killed in a battle with the Undead Knights and becomes the Nephilim, a giant demon. In his dying words, Gerard reveals that Fatima also controls a portion of undead servants of her own, having long since forsaken the land of Cavalier for her own selfish goals.

Later, the undead knights encounter various genetically engineered soldiers called Ouroboros, who were created by the mad, selfish wizard Lord Follis (Liam O'Brien), who attempt to convince the knights to join them, only to be told off. A battle ensues in which Follis uses the Fruit of the Holy Tree to mutate into a demon known as Venom Angel and is killed by the knights.

After the battle, Fatima's younger brother, the Jester (Thomas Brownhead) reveals that Romulus was the one who was inadvertently responsible for the deaths of Sylvia and Remus. During the attack on the House of Blood, Romulus was one of the knights participating in the attack and was searching for the two of them amid the chaos. When Kirk's knights captured them, Romulus summoned all of his rage-induced bloodlusts and slaughtered everyone in his path, but accidentally killed Sylvia and Remus during his rampage. Having earned the forgiveness of Sylvia and Remus, the three knights finally confront The Jester, who reveals himself to be a product of Fatima's experiments with the occult. Another battle ensues, and the knights succeed in killing the jester. They soon find a trio of knights whom they had killed earlier also revived into undead, defeating them in the process and ultimately killing Kirk Gradis, who had lost everything and became horrified by the uncontrollable powers Fatima had given him but regretted ever betraying the House of Blood.

In the finale, the truth of Fatima's rise to power and the dark powers she gave to her subordinates is finally revealed: Fatima herself was once a human who made a pact with The Beast in a demonic realm called The Void (eventually learning to control the blood's power to the point where she retained her current human appearance and intellect) and that the demonic power The Beast gave them was not magic as Lord Follis had said, but it was an infection created from the Beast's blood. Fatima also reveals that she created the Holy Tree from the Beast's blood to get rid of humanity's fear of death and create her ideal world where humans are immortal and will no longer bear the burden of life. When the knights oppose her goal of creating a world of undead demons, Fatima fuses herself with the tree and becomes a demon called Yggdrasil, only to be killed by the knights.

In her last breath, Fatima offers a crystallized stone made of demon blood to protect the knights from The Beast's influence, fearing that they will be hunted for what they have done in the name of vengeance. The trio soon realizes that The Beast had been using them as assassins right from the start while The Beast tells them that they are beyond redemption after all they have done. This leads them to destroy the crystal Fatima had given them in an act of defiance towards The Beast's wish of keeping them as slaves. Furious with their rebuke, The Beast warns the knights that they will die again and go to hell after their deaths, saying he will "keep a spot nice and warm for (them)." In the game's epilogue, the trio admits that they will serve the punishment for their sins in vengeance as "undead knights".

Release

On October 1, 2009, the Undead Knights demo was mistakenly replaced with the full game on the PlayStation Store, allowing consumers to download the full game for free.

Reception

The reception was mixed: the reviewers expressed extreme opinions with regard to the most controversial elements of the game. Some of them scorned the inconsistencies with the decorum of the genre and condemned the mixture of the underground death/black metal soundtrack and explicitly vulgar language not necessarily suited to the dark fantasy/medieval entourage. The others, in turn, praised the game and its story for the potency to evoke cathartic experiences.

External links

• Undead Knights @ IGN